Childbirth is the ending of a pregnancy by the delivery of one or more babies. Delivery may occur through a vaginal delivery or by Caesarian section (C-section). An expectant mother who will deliver by C-section is normally scheduled for surgery on a specific date and therefore can notify her spouse, family, friends, and obstetrician in advance of the surgical date. But a woman who anticipates a vaginal delivery is dependent on changes in her own body to indicate when the baby will arrive.
Vaginal delivery involves three stages of labor. The first stage is the shortening and opening of the cervix, the second stage is the descent and birth of the baby, and the third stage is the delivery of the placenta. If a hospital birth is planned, it is common practice for the expectant mother to go to the hospital during the first stage of labor; or if a home birth is planned, the midwife or birth attendant is normally called to begin attending to the expectant mother during the first stage of labor.
The first stage is normally defined as the point at which the woman perceives regular uterine contractions. The challenge is determining if the uterine contractions are occurring at regular intervals. Varying degrees of cramping or pain associated with each contraction may make it difficult to accurately assess the time, or interval, between contractions. Further, the expectant mother may dismiss early first stage contractions because of prior experience with Braxton Hicks contractions or “false labor”. Braxton Hicks contractions are contractions that are usually infrequent, regular, and involve only mild cramping that may start around 26 weeks gestation. In addition, the first stage of labor typically lasts from about twelve hours to about twenty hours, so it can be challenging for the expectant mother to know when to contact medical personnel and family members to her aid. Finally, because we live in a highly mobile society, the expectant mother may not be at or near home or a similar base location when the time first stage labor has reached the point when she needs medical assistance, so it may be challenging for contacted personnel to locate the expectant mother.
Efforts have been made to monitor when first stage labor begins by using tocodynamometers. The tocodynamometer operates by using a pressure transducer applied to the fundus of the uterus by means of a belt. The transducer is connected to a recording device that records the duration of the contractions and intervals between them. These devices, however, require the expectant mother to be physically still for extended periods of time to allow for accurate readings. Because of this and because the current devices use cumbersome recording devices, the prior art tocodynamometers are normally used to monitor the expectant mother's contractions for at most a couple hours each day and only in high-risk pregnancies.
It would be beneficial for expectant mothers to have an easy to use means to essentially continually monitor for the onset of first stage labor in the final trimester of pregnancy, including allowing the expectant mother to be mobile while using the monitoring means. It would further be beneficial to have the monitoring means configured to alert the expectant mother that labor has reached the point of requiring medical assistance and to alert those designated by the expectant mother that labor has reached the point of requiring medical assistance along with providing a designation of the physical location of the expectant mother at the time of alert.